Dr.
Authors/Creators
- 1. Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences
- 2. Gifu University
- 3. Fudan University
Description
The dataset is associated with the manuscript named as "Charge regions indicated by LMA lightning flashes in Hokuriku’s winter thunderstorms" which is submitted to the Journal of Geophysical Research Atmosperes. The following is the abstract:
The charge distribution of the cells during three winter thunderstorm processes in the Hokuriku region of Japan is investigated based on Lightning Mapping Array (LMA) flash data. If only referring to the vertical arrangements of charge regions involved in lightning discharges, various types of charge patterns are suggested, including quad-polar, tripolar, dipolar, inverted dipolar and inverted tripolar structures. By associating the charge regions with temperature, it is proposed that most of the investigated cells have charge distributions essentially agreeing with typical dipolar or tripolar charge structures reported by previous studies in winter storms and the riming electrification mechanism. However, in a few cells, the associations between temperature ranges and charge regions are exceptional, likely suggesting the diversity of charge structures. Many flashes neutralize primarily the middle negative charge and bottom positive charge, showing different features from those of typical summer thunderstorms. The charged cores are distributed from 0.7 to 5.3 km heights and 2 to –31 ℃ temperatures, while the distances between adjacent charged cores with opposite polarities change between 0.2 and 3.4 km, with a mean of 1.3 km. The mean flash duration, horizontal distance and area of the convex hull are 425.0 ms, 19.8 km, and 176.2 km2, respectively. We estimated the equivalent diameter of the charge region to be approximately 15 km on average. The average flash initiation height, temperature, and power are 2.8 km, −11.9 ℃ and 15.6 dBW, respectively.